2011 PAB Diary and Newsletters

ZIMBABWE ACADEMY OF MUSIC & PERFORMING ARTS BULAWAYO

NOVEMBER AT THE ACADEMY

Here’s the diary for November:

• Thursday 3 November  – Torn Curtain – 7.00 p.m.
• Friday 4 November  – Bellini: Norma  – 6.30 p.m.
• Monday 7 November  – Florent Charpentier (clarinet) & Melanie Brenant (accordion)  – 7.30 p.m.
• Wednesday 9 November  – ZAM Presentation – followed by a supper interval  – 5.15 p.m. and André Rieu: My African Dream  – 7.30 p.m.
• Thursday 10 November  – Wagner: BBC documentary & Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act I  – 7.00 p.m.
• Friday 11 November  – Wagner: Die Meistersinger, Acts II & III  – 6.30 p.m.
• Tuesday 15 November  – Mahler: Symphony No.8 / Bruckner: Te Deum  – 7.00 p.m.
• Thursday 17 November  – The Three Musketeers  – 7.00 p.m.
• Thursday 24 November  – The Four Musketeers  – 7.00 p.m.
• Friday 25 November  – Gounod: Faust  – 6.30 p.m.

Thursday 3 November   Torn Curtain
Robert Sibson Hall at 7.00 p.m.

Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in this classic Hitchcock tale of international espionage behind the Iron Curtain.  Newman plays world-famous scientist Michael Armstrong who goes to an international congress of physics in Copenhagen accompanied by his fiancée/assistant Sarah Sherman (Julie Andrews) who mistakenly picks up a message meant for him. She discovers that he seems to be planning to defect to East Germany and the couple are swept up in a heart-stopping chase in this action-packed Cold War thriller.

Admission: $3.00  [free to Film Subscribers]

Friday 4 November   Bellini: Norma
Robert Sibson Hall at 6.30 p.m. – with supper interval.  Carriages: 10.15 p.m.

Bellini’s Norma concerns the forbidden love of a Druid priestess for the Roman proconsul of Gaul and its tragic outcome.  The title role is one of opera’s supreme vocal and dramatic challenges with the aria Casta diva particularly well-known. In January 2006 Edita Gruberova performed the role on stage for the first time in a new production that left critics and audiences searching for superlatives: “Gruberova delivers her own wholly individual interpretation… she translates Bellini’s interplay of pain, love and desire into physically palpable inner and outer drama. Immensely moving” (Die Welt).

Admission: $3.00  [free to Red Carpet members]

Monday 7 November   Florent Charpentier (clarinet) & Melanie Brenant (accordion)
Robert Sibson Hall at 7.30 p.m.,

“A clarinet and accordion duo? What an unusual combination! Yet, when one looks at it closely, these two instruments are almost cousins.  A reed (the one that vibrates on the mouthpiece of the clarinet) and reeds (those that vibrate inside the “belly” of the accordion) produce similar sounds and make the two protagonists of this unusual duo companionable!  Here is a flexible duo (portable!), daring in the choice of repertoire and curious about everything with, in addition, the very infectious happiness (to be shared!) of playing together.”

Tickets: $5.00 – available at the Academy or at the door.
This concert is promoted by the Alliance Française, kindly supported by Eco Logical Safaris & Travel.
Red Carpet and PAB subscriptions do NOT apply.

Wednesday 9 November  ZAM Presentation & André Rieu: My African Dream
Robert Sibson Hall at 5.15 & 7.30 p.m.

The Academy’s annual prize-giving ceremony will be preceded by a short concert.
All welcome.

Following the Presentation and a break for supper (available or bring your own!), there will be a DVD of André Rieu in a Cape Town concert featuring South Africa singer Kimmy Skota.

Admission: $3.00

Thursday 10 & Friday 11 November   Wagner:   Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Robert Sibson Hall

Thursday 10 November at 7.00 p.m.  Wagner, a BBC documentary followed by Act I
Friday 11 November at 6.30 p.m.       Acts II & III, with supper interval

Wagner turned aside from The Ring and told his publisher that he had decided to cheer himself up with “something lighter” that would be finished in a year.  The result was The Mastersingers which in fact took him six years and remained his only mature comedy.  It will be shown over two nights and preceded by a BBC documentary narrated by Kenneth Branagh on the composer’s life. The opera itself comes in a traditional Met production conducted by James Levine and with as fine a cast as could be assembled including Karita Mattila as Eva, James Morris as Hans Sachs, Ben Heppner as Walther and Sir Thomas Allen as Beckmesser.

Admission: $3.00 (covers both evenings)  [free to Red Carpet members]

N.B.DATE! Tuesday 15 November   Bruckner: Te Deum / Mahler: Symphony No.8
Robert Sibson Hall at 7.00 p.m.

Mahler’s vast choral symphony is conducted by Leonard Bernstein in a performance full of “insight, control and an extraordinary exultancy… sections flow smoothly and naturally into one another, driving the music in great arching phrases through to the final redemptive blaze of glory” (David Gutman).  It is preceded by Bruckner’s heaven-storming Te Deum, a work particularly dear to Mahler: in his own copy, he cancelled the description “for chorus, solo voices, orchestra and organ”, replacing it with the words: “for angelic tongues, for God-seekers, tormented hearts and for souls purified in flames”.

Admission: $3.00  [free to Red Carpet members]

Thursday 17 November   The Three Musketeers
Robert Sibson Hall at 7.00 p.m.

It’s all for one and one for all as the Musketeers – D’Artagnan (Michael York), Athos (Oliver Reed), Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) and Porthos (Frank Finlay) – band together to defeat the machinations of Cardinal Richlieu (Charlton Heston) and Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway).  Raquel Welsh, Geraldine Chaplin, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee and Simon Ward are among the other well-known names in the all-star line-up.  “Delightful tongue-in-cheek version of Dumas classic, mixing swashbuckling adventure and romance with broad slapstick.  One of Raquel Welch’s finest hours” – Maltin’s Film Guide.

Admission: $3.00  [free to Film Subscribers]

Thursday 24 November   The Four Musketeers
Robert Sibson Hall at 7.00 p.m.

The Musketeers’ adventures continue in the “second half of Director Richard Lester’s irreverent but amusing approach to Dumas with less emphasis on slapstick this time round and a surprisingly dark conclusion.  Rich cast in top form” – Maltin again!

Admission: $3.00  [free to Film Subscribers]

Friday 25 November   Gounod: Faust
Robert Sibson Hall at 6.30 p.m. – with supper interval.  Carriages: 10.15 p.m.

A Royal Opera House production conducted by Antonio Pappano with the husband and wife team of Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna as Marguerite and Faust, and Bryn Terfel as Mephistopheles. “Terfel sings with panache and Gheorghiu… is capable of encompassing both the lyricism of the love scenes and the horror of her subsequent descent into insanity. The real revelation, however, is Alagna, who gives the performance of a lifetime, physically daring and vocally and dramatically responsive to every psychological shift” – The Guardian.

Admission: $3.00  [free to Red Carpet members]

December – provisional
Thursday 1 December – Dr.Zhivago -  7.00 p.m.
Friday 2 December  – A Mahler Journey  -  7.00 p.m.
Thursday 8 December  – Jane Eyre  [new 2011 version] -  7.00 p.m.
Friday 9 December  -  Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (Glyndebourne) -  6.30 p.m.
Wednesday 14 December  -  Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.4 / Mahler Symphony No.9  -  7.00 p.m.
Thursday 15 December  – The Sound of Music  -  7.00 p.m.
Thursday 22 December  – Tchaikovsky: The Sleeping Beauty  -  7.00 p.m.
Friday 23 December  -  Tchaikovsky: The Tsarina’s Slippers   -  6.30 p.m.
Saturday 31 December   -   Kálmán: The Gypsy Princess & Pineapple Poll  –   7.30 p.m.

Best wishes as always,

Michael Bullivant